Liberal States and Illiberal States

About J.D. Vance's Munich speech and the Forthcoming Ideological War

Note: This piece has been written before the infamous meeting of February 28, 2025 at the White House between Zelensky, Vance, and Trump. Needless to say, it only reinforces the analysis that follows.

In the span of one week in February and two speeches, American Vice-President J.D. Vance has made explicit what everybody already sensed: the post-Cold-War global order is definitely gone. It started with a quite offensive, if not aggressive talk at the AI Action Summit in Paris conveying the message that the U.S. would do whatever it takes to remain ahead in the AI race, even if that means harming competitors and “partners.” It continued, in a far more dramatic fashion at the Munich Security Conference, where Vance delivered a speech that – euphemism – shocked many Europeans. Let’s recapitulate the key points that Vance made on this occasion:[1]

· Several European countries are overtly undermining the right to free speech by curtailing the expression of some views regarding (anti-)feminism, abortion, religion, or the origins of the COVID pandemic.

· European countries are unable and unwilling to control immigration, despite the wish of their populations.

· European democracies are being undemocratic, insofar as they are trying to neutralize political views that find wide support among their electorate, or even canceling elections without any valid reason (Romania).

The bottom line of Vance’s speech is that European states are not living up to their democratic credentials, which supposedly undermines the credibility of their attacks against countries that they accuse of illiberalism or authoritarianism, including the U.S. They are just ignoring what people want. By silencing “dissidence” from the prevailing liberal order, European states are displaying their own fragility and, perhaps, the unsustainability of this very order.

As some commentators have documented, European states may indeed have a problem with free speech. That the European conception of free speech differs from the extensive North American one is not new. Until recently, this difference was visible only at the fringe of society with respect to extremely minoritarian views. The changing political landscape in Europe is however putting the conception of free speech by European democracies under pressure. It becomes increasingly obvious that this conception is unstable when political polarization aggravates and when the minimal consensus around liberal values and ideals is no longer firmly established. On the other hand, as the same commentators note, the Trump administration is not more of a model when free speech is at stake. More generally, there is an obvious irony, that would be almost laughable in other circumstances, that the messenger of someone who has and is still denying the results of a fair election gives Europeans democratic lessons.

Vance’s attack against European liberal democracies potentially has several motivations. Part of the attack has obviously been triggered by EU’s regulations of social networks. These regulations directly affect the economic interests of the “tech-oligarchs” that have been endorsing Trump. But something more fundamental is probably at play. Vance’s speech can be interpreted as a declaration of ideological war, insofar as it expresses a radical criticism of the sociopolitical order exemplified by European democracies. Let’s be clear about this. Vance’s problem with Europe is not that it curtails freedom of speech per se. It is that it curtails a specific speech that expresses views that Vance endorses. Vance’s problem with European democracies is not that they are trying to neutralize political platforms in general, it is that they are trying to neutralize those platforms (e.g., the German’s AfD) with which he has some ideological affinities. Vance’s speech prefigures a long-lasting ideological struggle that goes beyond conflictual conceptions of free speech or even democratic legitimacy. The struggle is about the good society, about the kind of society worth living in and whose rules can be accepted by its population.

This reflects a fundamental change between Trump’s first and second mandates. When Trump took office in 2017, he mostly was an amateur (though successful) politician with no competent supporting cast and, more importantly, no real political vision. He was nothing more than the archetypical populist who excels at gathering popular support by attacking the imagined and often real flaws of the prevailing liberal order and its elites. He had no real ideological alternative to offer. The style prevailed over the substance. Things are different today. As the French historian Marlène Laruelle notes in a very interesting op-ed in the French journal Le Monde, Vance’s speech reflects a systematic and coherent illiberal vision:

“the sovereignty of the nation-state is paramount and cannot be limited by supranational laws or institutions; society cannot function without moral authority, and this authority can lead to forms of authoritarianism against democratic institutions if these are deemed dysfunctional or “captured” by “woke” elites; laws must be made for the majority, not for minorities; societies must be culturally homogeneous; foreigners can integrate by accepting assimilation, but not by demanding multiculturalism; individuals are not blank cards in terms of identity, but are steeped in history and geography, identity markers that must be protected and valued; cultural norms in terms of family, sex and gender cannot evolve rapidly.”[2]

I would characterize this vision as displaying three pillars. First, a conservative pillar that reflects a rejection of progressive norms that threaten traditional institutions like the Church or marriage and of all forms of individualism that, one way or another, assume that individuals can emancipate from an established social and cultural background. Then, a nationalist pillar states that this social and cultural background is essentially defined by (some conception of) the Nation. Both at the moral and economic levels, it justifies putting the interests of the Nation at the forefront, above and beyond the interests of individuals and other nations. Finally, a populist pillar that grounds a conception of democracy according to which political legitimacy is tied to the majoritarian will. Constitutionalism (the rule of law, the separation of power) and pluralism are viewed with suspicion or even rejected because they betray the popular will.

Vance’s attack on European democracy must be analyzed in light of these three pillars. In this vision, free speech is not a fundamental right, it only has an instrumental value insofar as it permits the expression of conservative and nationalist ideals. This is not the first time that liberal democracies have been attacked along these lines. Within Europe itself, several populist leaders have been attacking the EU with similar arguments. Authoritarian regimes in Russia (overtly) and China (more covertly) have been doing the same. The difference is that the attack is now coming from a historical ideological and military ally with what appears to be a full-blown alternative vision of the good society.

Maybe the most disturbing about this evolution is that Vance’s speech does not even pretend to hide the disdain and contempt that the proponents of this alternative vision have for European democracies, their elites, and their populations. Disdain and contempt toward the ideals, values, and elites of the liberal orders is historically something that has been expressed by leaders of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. The leaders of those regimes, from Hitler to Putin, have traditionally viewed liberal democracies as weak, a perceived weakness that motivates their military aggressions. America’s Trump is similarly betting on European democracies’ perceived economic, political, and military weaknesses. While it’s unclear that the Trump administration has real expansionary plans, it is clear that it is using its bargaining power to obtain concessions from European countries. As Vance’s speech illustrates, these requested concessions may not be only economic and military, but also ideological.

For a large part, what illiberal regimes and leaders are interpreting as weaknesses is actually due to the fact that liberal democracies are by nature “conservative” in a very specific sense. European democracies are trying to preserve the existing order. By contrast, Trump’s conservative-nationalist-populist vision is “revolutionary” as it intends to overturn this order. Conservatives are always at a disadvantage against revolutionaries for at least two reasons. First, the flaws, inconsistencies, and limits of the order they are trying to protect are visible and hard to deny. Second, in the ideological, if not military, war with their revolutionary opponents, they are constrained by their own rules and principles. This is only aggravating the flaws and inconsistencies that burden them. Vance’s speech and its attack on the way European democracies are curbing freedom of speech provides a good illustration. European democracies are torn between their ideal of free expression and the requirement of controlling the disorder that free speech can produce. There is no easy solution to this conundrum and that makes them easy targets.

The main challenge for European democracies for the coming decade will be to survive attacks on its liberal order that are coming from the inside but also now from a powerful “ally” that has, at least for the near future, turned its back on liberalism. There is no blueprint for how to proceed. It is maybe worth recalling two general guidelines offered by two “Cold War” liberals more than eighty years ago, in a different context. First, with respect to internal attacks, we should stick with Karl Popper’s tolerance principle according to which we should not tolerate those who are intolerant.[3] Second, concerning external threats, we would be advised to keep in mind Raymond Aron’s claim that democracies should be capable of displaying the same virtues (“être capable des même vertus”) as their illiberal aggressors.[4] No doubt, over the short run that may go against some of the very values and principles that European democracies are defending. This is the price to pay to win an ideological war.

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[1] I’m using the transcript of Vance’s speech as published by the French newspaper Le Monde (in French).

[2] Translation from the French assisted by DeepL.

[3] Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 7th edition (Routledge, 1944 [2012]), p. 116, fn. 4.

[4] Raymond Aron, “Democratic States and Totalitarian States,” 1939.